


Girls with Short Hair Who Play Quidditch

by azurish



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (really light but both are present), F/F, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Queer Themes, Self-Acceptance, Stereotypes, Stop Being So Stereotypical!!!, alternative lifestyle haircut, covering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know what they say about girls with short hair who play Quidditch."<br/>Ginny contemplates a Very Significant Haircut.  Luckily for her, her girlfriend is kind of an amazing non-conformist.  (Also, Ron can't catch a break, really.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls with Short Hair Who Play Quidditch

            “I think I’m going to cut off my hair,” Ginny told Ron one morning at breakfast, and then she popped a bite of pancake into her mouth, as nonchalant as if she were only talking about de-gnoming techniques or (perhaps more likely) the best way to avoid their mother on de-gnoming days.  Only the viciousness with which she speared the pancake belied her calm.

            Ron choked on a piece of heavily-buttered toast.  He coughed; Harry thumped him on the back.  “If you do, Mum’ll be mad enough to kill someone,” he said, the instant he had enough air to talk.  His eyes widened with slowly-dawning horror.  “Oh my God, she’ll kill _me_.  She’s going to blame this on me.  Oh, _God_.”

            Ginny frowned.  Ron’s reaction had been neither the response she’d been fearing nor the response she’d expected.  (She wasn’t entirely sure what the response she’d been hoping for was, but that hadn’t been it, either.)

            Ron picked up his glass, then set it down with a heavy clunk as a second realization seemed to break over him.  He leaned forward.  “What did I do?”

            “What?”

            “No, come on – you know Mum’ll blame me somehow.  You’re just doing this to get back at me.  Was it what I said about Dean Thomas?  I didn’t mean –”

            “I’m not doing this to get back at you, Ron,” Ginny said, sharply.

            Apparently reluctant to abandon this train of logic, however, Ron continued on, “Look, I know that –”

            “Ron, I don’t like Dean Thomas anymore and I don’t care if you want to use _every_ swearword you know to describe him.  Actually, I’d be happy to listen and chime in.  But Dean is not the point; what _is_ the point, is – is – well –” Ginny broke off with the unpleasant realization that she wasn’t sure herself exactly _what_ the point was and, what was more, she didn’t really want to explore her psyche that deeply.  Instead of completing the thought, she glared at her brother, pursed her lips, stood up, and stalked out of the great hall, leaving several cooling sausages and a half-eaten scone on her plate.

            Ron shot a quizzical look at Harry, who wisely decided to continue to pursue a politic strategy of silence.  The pitifully-weak sibling instincts that living with Dudley had instilled in him had never prepared him for the Weasleys.

 

*

 

            “Hermione, I think I want to cut my hair off.”

            Without glancing away from the potted plant she was gingerly holding in front of her with a set of tongs, Hermione nodded.  “Oh, yes, that sounds like exactly what I would do too – uh – Ginny.  Just – hold on a moment, will you?”

            Ginny crossed her arms, but Hermione didn’t notice.  Still not looking back at Ginny, she walked across the greenhouse, the tongs clutched in her white-knuckled hands, and deposited the plant on a cart alongside nearly a dozen other leafy sprouts.  Quite carefully, she tugged a metal cover over the tray of plants.  When the cover clicked closed, a massive sigh of relief escaped her.

            She dropped the tongs on top of the tray with a muffled clang, wiped her dirty palms on her robes, and ran a hand through her bushy hair, trying to finger-comb the sweaty, brown mass back into some semblance of neatness.  Finally, she turned back to Ginny and, upon noticing scowl on the other girl’s face, smiled ruefully.  “I’ve said something stupid, haven’t I.”

            “Well, unless you’re really considering getting a matching pixie cut, yes.”

            Hermione laughed.  Though quiet, the other girl’s giggle was enough to make Ginny smile just a bit herself.  “All right, I’m sorry – Professor Sprout did warn me that if I dropped the bulb, we’d have an infestation in the entire greenhouse, and I’d have term’s worth of detentions.  Under the circumstances, I think a little distraction is understandable.”

            Ginny shrugged.

            “Right.”  Hermione cocked her head and regarded Ginny for a moment, and then said, in a no-nonsense tone, “Let’s go sit down to talk.”

            Outside the greenhouse, the air was much lighter, crisp and cool with a mid-autumn breeze, no longer weighed down by the muggy damp inside the glass-walled building.  They sat together in the grass, the dew on the ground pleasantly cool.  The long shadows of early evening gathered in the hollows of the land and stretched from the trees to the greenhouse, striping the two girls with shade.

            Ginny plopped down next to Hermione and fiddled with a blade of grass for a few moments, tugging it this way and that before finally plucking it out of the soil altogether.  Without looking up from the green stems, she spoke.  “I want to cut my hair really short.”

            “All right.  Any reason why?”

            Ginny frowned and pulled up half a dozen more blades of grass before responding.  “I dunno.  I just – it might look nice.  I always wanted short hair when I was little – it’s what happens when you have lots of brothers, I think.  Now that I’m older, I figure I can do what I want.”  Just a little defensively, she added, “It be really useful, too – it’d keep my hair out of the way during Quidditch.”

            “Well, if you have all these reasons for it – what’s stopping you?  There’re charms you can do for it.  I can teach you how to use them.”

            “Ron’s right,” Ginny said glumly.  “Mum would kill someone.  Probably first him, then me.”

            Hermione gave a half-shrug.  “She won’t see it until Christmas, and besides, you’re old enough that you’re right: you can do what you want.  She’s learned to live with Bill’s ponytail.  She’ll get over it.”

            Ginny fiddled with the grass for a while.  “It’s stupid,” she said, at last.

            “Hmm?”

            “I dunno.  All of it.”

            Hermione, with nothing to say in response, simply sat in silence.  After a few moments, she put an arm around Ginny’s shoulder.  The younger girl almost shrugged it off, but then just sighed and let it sit there.

            “Careful,” Ginny said, at last.  “People will talk if they see you like that with me.”

            “I don’t really care.”

            Silence, and then, a little more subdued than usual, “You’re the best, Hermione.  Thanks.”

 

*

 

            “Hey, what do you think I’d look like with a pixie cut?” Ginny asked Demelza.  Her words had a studied carelessness to them, as if it were a spur-of-the-moment thought.  “’cause I was just thinking, it could help out in the air, and, well …”

            The younger chaser shifted her broomstick from one hand to the other as she considered the idea, then said, “Yeah, I – I guess it would.”  She laughed, a quiet, shy sound.  “I’d do just about anything not to have to retie a ponytail in midair ever again …”

            Ritchie Coote, who’d fallen behind them as the team trooped back to the castle, jogged a little to catch up.  “Are you _really_ thinking about cutting your hair off?” he asked.  “I mean, you know what they say about girls who play Quidditch, after all – don’t want to encourage them.”

            Demelza looked down and said nothing, but Ginny – Ginny, who was reaching the end of her fuse and didn’t _want_ to look down and say nothing anymore – looked him straight in the eye.  “What d’you mean?”

            Ritchie laughed – a short, confused, sound – and then shrugged uncomfortably, when no one else said anything.  “Well everyone _thinks_ it, after all,” he said.  “Like –”  Jimmy Peakes tried to nudge him silent, still looking out for his fellow beater off the field, but Ritchie continued, “You’d look like a right lesbian, with that haircut and all.  Girls with short hair who play Quidditch – you don’t want to be Madame Hooch, do you?”

            In the silence, Demelza’s quiet gasp was audible.  Ginny opened her mouth to say – well, she wasn’t quite sure what, but it would have a lot of four-letter words in it and a fair amount of speculation on the size of Ritchie’s intellect (along with, perhaps, the size of other attributes of his) – but Harry beat her to it.

            Their captain, looking fairly uncomfortable but seeming to have decided he couldn’t pretend not to hear them any longer, placed a warning hand on Ritchie’s shoulder.  “That’s enough of that, right?  I don’t want to hear anyone on my team saying things like –”

            Ritchie shrugged him off.  “I’m just trying to help!  Don’t pretend you all haven’t heard what they’re saying about her and Loony Love –”

            And then he stopped talking because, as the famous Miranda Goshawk, inventor of Ginny’s much-beloved Bat-Bogey Hex had once said, it is very hard indeed to continue talking when your snot has just turned into black bats that are trying to escape from your nostrils.

            Ginny stomped away angrily.

 

*

 

            Where the light from the setting sun caught in Luna’s hair, it lit up like a halo, as if there were strands of pure gold shot through her dirty blond hair.  Ginny grinned, a stupid, happy smile, and combed her fingers through Luna’s hair where it lay splayed it out across her lap.

            Without opening her eyes, Luna smiled faintly and shifted her head further up Ginny’s thigh.  “Mmm.  That was nice,” she said, drowsily.  “Do it again?”

            “Your hair is _gorgeous_ ,” Ginny said.  Her voice was hushed – not because she was afraid that Madam Pince, who could be heard from the floor below scolding a group of first years for eating in the library, would hear them, but more because quiet seemed to suit the moment.  They were sprawled out in a window seat in an alcove together, Ginny with a stack of books to her right and Luna with a copy of her Charms essay beside her, though both had given up on studying ages ago.  The setting sun was warm and the library hummed, quietly, with the energy of dozens of students.  She ran her hands through Luna’s hair again, the strands falling through her fingers, soft and ticklish.  As an afterthought, she added, “ _You’re_ gorgeous,” and then she giggled.

            If Luna were the kind of girl who blushed regularly, Ginny would have teased her for the faint pink shading that sprung to her cheeks.  As it was, her own smile simply widened, fondly, as she looked down at her girlfriend.

            “Speaking of hair …” she said, and then she paused.

            “Hmm?”  Luna cracked open one eye.

            “I was thinking of cutting most of mine off.”

            Luna closed the eye again.  “That’s probably a good idea,” she said, at last.  “There’s a species of wrackspurts, you know, that sometimes hides in hair …  Perhaps I should cut mine off too.”  A contemplative frown spread across her face.  “Maybe we should do it together.”

            “Mmm, I don’t know,” Ginny said.  “I _like_ your hair …  I was just thinking of cutting mine because I’ve always wanted to, see.  The wrackspurts weren’t really a, uh, motivating factor.”

            “Why haven’t you done it yet?”

            Ginny shrugged.  “Never really thought about it seriously before, I guess.

            “Why don’t you do it now, then?”

            “Dunno.  People.”

            Luna opened both eyes, which was quite unfairly distracting, when you considered how big and gray and pretty they were.  “Hmm?”

            “People’ll talk, you know how it is.”  Ginny broke eye contact with Luna and looked down at her hair instead, fiddled with a few of the blond strands in her fingers.  “They already think I’m queer enough right now …”  She dropped Luna’s hair and looked away.

            Luna slid her torso off her lap and levered herself up into a sitting position.  Her tone neutral, she said, “So you don’t want people to think you’re –”

            “No!” Ginny said hastily.  “No, I don’t mind at all.  If you said right now that you wanted to walk into the Great Hall tomorrow morning holding hands, I’d say yes right away.  I don’t care whether people know about me – and I _want_ people to know about us, once we’re ready.”  She locked her fingers together and glared down at them.  “It’s just – I don’t know.”

            Luna laid a delicate hand across her shoulders but said nothing.

            Ginny sighed.  “I play Quidditch and I like girls as much as boys.  If I had short hair as well …  I’d be a walking stereotype.”

            “And you don’t like that?”

            “I mean – you have to show them that they’re wrong, right?  You can kiss girls and have long hair and wear skirts, too.  You can’t – you’re not supposed to play into their stupid stereotypes.  You have to show them that …”  Ginny trailed off and glared harder at her interlaced fingers.  “You’ve got to be an example, and not …”

            Luna scooched closer, so that their arms were touching; after a moment, Ginny leaned over and rested her head on Luna’s shoulder.

            At length, Luna spoke.  “If you want short hair, you should have short hair,” she said, her tone unusually firm.  “Ginny, there’s nothing _wrong_ with having short hair and liking girls at the same time.  It’s – well.”  She smiled faintly.  “It’s a little silly.  What’s so bad with happening to _be_ a little stereotypical, if that’s what you want?”

            “Did you just call me silly?”

            “A little, yes,” Luna said, and she laughed, a little hiccupping sound, when Ginny flicked her arm with her index finger.  “I wouldn’t if you weren’t _being_ silly.  Cut your hair, if you want.  Don’t if you don’t.  It’s their fault for being idiots, anyways.  I’ve long hair because I like it,” and then she frowned and added, conscientiously, “and also because it helps ward off frizzling parsfledges, but if I wanted short hair, I wouldn’t let the fact that someone’s going to place me in some awful little box for it stop me.”

            Ginny sighed, softly, and then melted against Luna.  Her voice even quieter, she said, “You’re amazing, you know that?” Luna’s hand on her shoulder blade tightened, just a bit, in silent thanks.  “Love you,” she added, tentatively.

            Unable to see Luna’s face, she held her breath.  But then – “Mmm.  Love you too, of course,” Luna said, a moment later, and the warmth that shot through her was ten times better than the contentment from earlier.

 

*

 

            When Ginny walked into the Great Hall half a week later with a pixie cut, there were a few muted whispers and Ron moaned quietly, but that was that.  When she sat down at the Ravenclaw table opposite Luna at breakfast about a month after that, and then kissed her goodbye as she left for class, the whispers were a bit louder, but a few well-directed glares stopped them.

            When Seamus Finnigan loudly declared one night in the common room that he should’ve _known_ that Ginny was going to dump his best friend – “I mean, Dean figured after the haircut, right?  Plays Quidditch, has short hair, the works” – Ginny didn’t even have time to take out her wand, because Ron had already decked him.

            Instead, she satisfied herself with a calm, “I liked girls _and_ boys just as much when I had long hair as I do now, thanks all the same.  I just don’t like _Dean Thomas_.” and then stood up, dusted herself off, and walked past the brawling boys up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory to go change, because, after all, she had a date tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to ramble a bit here, but I think I'm allowed - this fic has been in the making for nearly a year, now, and it's Important, to me, so.
> 
> This fic is dedicated in two parts:  
> Firstly, to any babyqueer fen out there reading this. <3  
> And, secondly, to Kenji Yoshino, to whose book "Covering: the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights" both I and this fanfic are greatly indebted.
> 
> (Additionally, I'd like to note that I feel vaguely guilty for making Seamus say what he did at the end of the fic *shrug*, but eh. It actually makes sense in my headcanon for the fic, which was that Seamus is slowly realizing he's in love with Dean and is a) kind of panicked about this and b) even more angrily protective of his best friend than usual. End result? Lashing out at Ginny. #themoreyouknow)
> 
> Beyond that, thank you to bonnienugget over on tumblr, who read the whole thing over for me to help me figure out whether Luna was IC. =) And thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.


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